Nugget 12: When demanding truth of people who work for you, consider how much truth you give your boss’s.

Explanation:

Another really obvious one. But watching the puzzlement on people’s faces, particularly relatively senior management, when they don’t get completely honest and open statements from their team members, when they themselves guard and only pass out limited information to their own boss’s or bosses bosses really shows that people don’t think this way.

As always with this kind of thing, it’s quite simple. Just put yourself in someone else’s position. If you will not tell your boss or your boss’s boss the complete and open truth. How can you expect your team members to do that for you? What makes you special?

Don’t think that suddenly you are one of the gang. or are somehow exempt from human behaviour. It only takes one rant, when you’re having a bad day or one act of taking it out on someone else. and suddenly you’re a boss and you’re a boss forever.

You can’t get it back, so if you want total truth from the people who work for you you will need to either PROOVE you are someone that can be trusted, or be as truthful to others as you want them to be to you.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Nugget 11: Negotiating only works with the correct sort of deliverables, otherwise it can do more harm than good.

Explanation:

It is an automatic behaviour in a lot of managers to negotiate any quote or estimation of work, in a misplaced belief that all things can be dropped to their lowest ‘price’ and that this shows somehow that they are in ‘charge’. however as I have discovered in many a project, particularly those centred around internal systems and data with unknowns, that it is a misplaced economy, you may think that when you’ve negotiate a project down from 12 to 8 months you are getting the same product in a shorter period of time, but you are not, with a lot of such projects the quotations come from a technical source, which means that the quote is an honest belief in how long it will take to produce a quality product, knocking this down and making it faster doesn’t mean you get the same quality product, it means you actually get a rubbish product and long-term you have actually hurt the project far more than allowing a delivery in a reasonable time period, when you are dealing with both internal business and/or technical staff please be aware that the people might not be trying to make a profit out of you, they may just be trying to do a good job

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Nugget 10: Just because in certain meetings everybody stops to listen to what you have to say because you’re the most senior person on the call, doesn’t mean what you have to say is actually useful, learn when to shut up!!

Explanation:

This is an easy trap to fall into and I have to say I still fall into it now, you are a manager of a team or simply the most senior person on the call, and whenever you say something, particularly when it’s third party vendors on the call, they will stop what they’re saying and pay attention to you and this attention is a drug!!, you see managers who do nothing but talk and talk, walking over other people’s conversations and ignoring the volume of the other experts on the call, just about everybody else on that call has a strong and valid opinion, they wouldn’t be on the call or rather they shouldn’t be on the call if that was not the case.

Yes, the most senior person on the call often has the responsibility of keeping the call moving and covering for blank spaces, as well as doing a summary and introductions, but try to not stifle other people, if you struggle on this, move to known call structures, such as round table where each person takes it in turns.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.